Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway today for the three thousandth edition of Desert Island Discs is the former Royal Navy Test Pilot Captain Eric Winkle Brown.

Presenter0:43

His ability to take on danger and win is staggering.

Presenter0:46

The Navy Fleet Air Arms most decorated pilot, his life reads like a handbook on beating the odds.

Presenter0:52

Landing on a flight deck is acknowledged as one of the most difficult things a pilot can do. Eric Brown has held the record for the most flight deck landings for over sixty five years. Add to that the fact that he was one of only two men on his ship to survive a German U boat bombing.

Presenter1:08

And you get some idea of his bravery and brilliance.

Presenter1:12

In a long and remarkable life he has witnessed first hand momentous events in world history, from the Berlin Olympics in nineteen thirty six to the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp.

Presenter1:23

Flying, he believes, is in his blood. He first climbed into the open cockpit of a Gloucester gauntlet as a child to sit on his father's knee.

Presenter1:31

Thirty years later, he would pilot Britain's first ever supersonic flight.

Presenter1:36

He says it's an exhilarating world to live in. There's always that aura of risk. You come to value life in a slightly different way. So welcome, Captain Eric Brown.

Presenter1:49

Can you explain how your life's work involving so much potential danger has, you think, sort of influenced your personality? How how has it changed you, all the things you've been through?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)2:00

I made a point of preparing myself very well indeed, because after all, you owe this to yourself, to your family, you don't want to lose their opinion, and you want to bring back results.

Presenter2:13

Suppose So kick the tires, light the fires, and last one off Sir Sissy, as as many of those fighter pilots used to say. That wasn't your motto then. You had a different approach. Not at all, and I think that sort of attitude costs a lot of lives.

Presenter2:28

In your personality, then, it strikes me that there is something of a paradox, because you are somebody who enjoys you must surely enjoy the thrills and the spills, and yet at all times you are mitigating against chance. Those are two quite strange things to live together in the same personality.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)2:44

Yeah.

Presenter2:44

Yeah. I

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)2:45

M was Strange mixture of an academic and a

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)2:50

A cowboy

Presenter2:52

Well, it's worked well for you so far. I wouldn't give up the formula. You must have experienced, surely, though, many, many times, a sense of deep seated fear. How does one ride that fear and marshal it and not let it control you?

Presenter3:06

Don't you know I

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)3:07

I really never felt fear. In fact, I react almost the opposite. If things are really difficult, I go ice cold, my brain seems

Presenter3:17

Mr. Grappagia.

Presenter3:20

It might be indelicate to mention your age, but I should tell listeners that you are now ninety five. Do you still drive, driver?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)3:25

Oh, I still drive. Oh, yes, I've just bought myself a new

Presenter3:25

Boys.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)3:29

Bruce you're a sports car. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Thoroughly enjoying it.

Presenter3:35

There's a twinkle in his eye, I should tell you. Right, time for some music, then, Captain Brown. Tell me what we're going to hear first off to day. In

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)3:42

In November nineteen forty four.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)3:45

I was flying a prototype Spitfire Twelve up in the area of Yorkshire, ran into very bad weather and realized there was an airfield close by called Topcliffe. Well I called and said could they take me in? They said yes, but there's an aircraft ahead if you're full of VIPs. So when I finally landed I found that aircraft had the Glenn Miller Air Force's orchestra aboard. The CEO of the station and Glenn Millers had a chat and I heard Glenn say to him, Can you give us a room to rehearse? So I went and listened to them and they were of course absolutely beautiful. And finally Glenn said to them, Take five, we'll have a break. While I was sitting there the boy said to me, Would you like to try and have a little sing with us? So we went up and I sang the Lovely, Lovely at last. The room had two swing doors at the back and these opened and Glenn came in.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)4:48

And he just opened the doors and sh paused and listened.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)4:53

And uh he called from the back, That wasn't bad, if I run out of singers I'll call for you.

Speaker 45:00

At last my love has come along.

Speaker 45:12

My lonely days are over.

Speaker 45:18

And life is like a song

Presenter5:27

Singing at last. That was Ray Eberley with the Glen Miller Orchestra. So, Captain Eric Brown, you've described flying as an obsession. You say it's something I had to do, otherwise my soul would never be at peace. Tell me more about that.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)5:41

Flying

Presenter5:41

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)5:42

Takes your life over, really.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)5:45

If you really

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)5:47

Get an aircraft that you bond with.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)5:51

Then you feel that you're b one piece, that's not you and the Nairpan, that's just the two of you.

Presenter5:59

You have flown more designs of aircraft than any human being in history. In my notes it says 487, is that right? Yes.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:07

Yeah.

Presenter6:08

At the Gloucester Gauntlet that I mentioned in the introduction, there you were sitting in this open cockpit. That gives us an idea of quite how old the plane was and quite how far back you go. You were aged about eight or ten when you first sat on you sat on your father's knee and he said, We're going up. Was your mother there?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:14

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:18

Sat on

Presenter6:24

No, and we

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:25

We concealed it from her, but um there was a little bit of a tat afterwards.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:31

Uh

Presenter6:31

What do you remember of the sensation of going up with?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:34

Oh

Presenter6:34

Oh,

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:35

He let me hold the stick, but I couldn't reach the rudder pedals, and he wouldn't let me touch the throttle. But so exciting. And the die was cast.

Presenter6:44

That was it.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)6:45

That was it.

Presenter6:46

Just like that. Y your Navy colleagues nicknamed you Winkle, um short for Perry Winkle, because of your rather diminutive stature. Um leaving that to one side, you actually think that that being a a small guy, a shorter guy, has helped to keep you safe. Why do you think that is?

Presenter7:03

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)7:03

If you're six feet odd, you have great difficulty in an aircraft. Uh your legs are too long. When you eject, you're liable to lose your legs as they hit the cockpit uh going through the canopy. Well, as little chaps like me you put your money

Presenter7:21

You bought your five five seven? You bet five seven, yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)7:23

Five seventy and you sit in competitive comfort.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)7:26

Yes, it is comparative, I bet. And when things go wrong, tuck your legs back under.

Presenter7:32

Time for your second piece of music, then, Eric Brown. Tell me about what we're going to hear now, disc two.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)7:37

As you know, we've had the referendum on the Scotty situation, and I thought I would.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)7:44

choose a record that would give a bit of celebration, not for the pros or the cons, but just for the fact that the whole process was over and done with, because I think it perturbed a lot of people, and I think it's just nice to put it to all to rest.

Presenter8:50

The band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and Amazing Grace. So, Eric Brown, let's talk a little bit about where you came from. You were born in Edinburgh in nineteen nineteen, an only child. Tell me about your parents.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)9:03

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)9:04

I had a mother who was crippled.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)9:07

She had been knocked over by a a farm vehicle or a car, I'm not sure which, at the age of eighteen. And she was thirty six when she gave birth to you and only

Presenter9:17

That's correct.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)9:19

She died, unfortunately, fairly early. I tried to help her as much as I could, so we were very close to each other. My dad was rather a distant figure, because being in the Air Force he wasn't home all that much, except he abandoned the Air Force for three years because my mother was getting a little uh more infirm and he wanted to stay with her. Did did that bring you closer together after your mother passed away? Oh, yes, indeed. It brought me very much closer, yes. Oh, I was quite devastated when my mother died. In fact, I was so devastated I Lost a year at school.

Presenter9:59

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)10:00

Or

Presenter10:00

And you were around about, I think about seventeen, when you got the opportunity, I've read to fly as a passenger in a Luftwaffe plane. That sounds unusual. How how did that come about? In nineteen

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)10:11

eighteen thirty six. Because it was the year of the Olympics in Germany, they decided to hold a reunion of competent pilots from World War One.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)10:22

Now my father hadn't been a condom because he was still in training at the end. Nevertheless, he got the invitation. He wrote the organizer, General Ernst Udet, and said, Can I bring my son? And to our surprise, Udet said, I welcome.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)10:41

and met Udet, who was a complete extrovert and a delightful man, and he was the World Aerobatic Champion at that time. He spent more time with me than he seemed to spend with anybody. And finally he said, Would you like to come flying with me? You talk about aerobatics. We did every one, I think, and I was hanging on to my tubby. So when we landed, and he gave me the fright of my life because we approached upside down, and Eddie rolled out in time just to land. He said to me as I got out of the cockpit, slapped me on between the shoulder blades and gave me the old World War One fighter pilot's greeting, Haus und Beindbruch, which means broken neck and broken legs. But um that was their greeting. And he said, You'll make a fine fighter pilot. Do me two favours.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)11:37

Learn to speak German fluently, and he learned to fly.

Presenter11:42

Uh

Presenter11:43

Tell me about your third disc this morning, Erkbrand. Why have you chosen this and what is it?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)11:47

Uh

Presenter11:47

I've

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)11:48

Two instruments that attract me. One is the clarinet and the other the trumpet.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)11:54

And in this record Archie Shaw, who of course was and to my mind the finest clarinet, swing clarinetist of his time, plays a beautiful solo and serges the trumpet.

Presenter13:11

That was Artie Shaw and Stardust featuring Billy Butterfield on trumpet.

Presenter13:16

So, Erik Brown, tell me about actually witnessing the Berlin Olympics themselves, never mind flying with the Luftwaffe pilots. What was it actually like to be there and to watch it all happen at such a moment in history when indeed the world was watching?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)13:28

Uh

Presenter13:28

Uh

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)13:29

The zinc

Presenter13:29

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)13:29

Uh was all the flag waving. Of course a young boy is very susceptible to this. Everybody seemed to be having a wonderful time. But as time went on, and certainly um when I my later times in Germany, there was a blanket of evil hanging over the whole country. There was something underlying it that was very

Presenter13:54

Blong.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)13:56

Uh

Presenter13:56

And so you studied modern languages at Edinburgh University and you joined the university's air squadron.

Presenter14:01

I wonder though gi given your enthusiasm for flying, I'm confused as to why you actually ended up in the Royal Navy, uh rather than more obviously the

Presenter14:10

The RAF after war broke out.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)14:13

The University Air Squadron was run by the RAF. Then at this time, the Navy's carrier Courageous was sunk in the Irish Sea with a heavy loss of pilots. Because of this loss, the Navy was looking for volunteers to change over, so I put my name on the list.

Presenter14:33

Your squadron was assigned to HMS Audacity, and on a night you will remember surely very clearly, the night of december the twenty first, nineteen forty one, your your ship was uh torpedoed.

Presenter14:45

As your comrades were were floating around you, they began dying, and you and another fellow managed to stay alive. How did you manage to stay alive?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)14:55

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)14:55

There were twenty four of us. Two were pilots, all the others were seamen.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:01

We tied ourselves together, not with rope, just with string, actually. Being pilots, the two of us had May Wests on.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:09

Whereas the seamen just had what was an inner tube rounded middle and tapes over the shoulders.

Presenter15:16

May West, as you describe it. Just, of course, that's a euphemism for these. They were sort of.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:21

Very puffy live top. Yes, and right behind your your head.

Presenter15:22

It's all passed up.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:25

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:26

So we all fell asleep. What um this was December in the B Bay of Biscay, very cold, and um as you fall asleep you topple forward. Now we didn't in the May West because they held us up, but all these seamen drowned because as soon as they fell asleep

Presenter15:29

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:45

They fell forward into the water. And when one

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)15:50

did this, we had to cut him off because he was pulled the rest of us under with him. So it was terrible. We were just cutting people off, twenty two chaps

Presenter16:02

You were given at the time what was called survivors' leave, which was a month long.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)16:06

Yeah, which

Presenter16:08

And very interestingly, during that month of leave you decided you were going to get married. W was it important to you to have a sort of investment in the future? W did it seem that seems a very optimistic thing to be doing.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)16:19

Absolutely. I thought to myself, I don't think I'll survive the war. I must feel a bit of life. I must feel what love is, because I was an only child. To have a a wonderful woman as your companion is is it's always in my life been necessary.

Presenter16:40

Yeah.

Presenter16:41

Time for some music, Eric Brown. What are we going to hear now? Tell me about your fourth choice of the day.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)16:45

Uh

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)16:45

The wonderful band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines always bring a tingle to my spine. When they play Sunset, it's always been my custom to pause and think

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)17:00

of the people I knew who fought with me, actually with me, and died with me. So young, nineteen twenty

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)17:12

In the flower of youth, cut off, you owe them.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)17:17

This respect.

Presenter18:08

That was Sunset from the band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines. So, Eric, in nineteen forty two your your considerable aviation skills ensured that you were then selected as a a test pilot for the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

Presenter18:21

Tell me about deck landings. I mentioned when I was introducing you this morning that they are acknowledged as being among the very hardest things that a pilot might be required to do. Can you explain to us why it is that deck landings are so very difficult?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)18:35

Well, if you're in the RF, you have a combat, let's say, and you come back to your base and you've got a big airfield and a runway to land on. You're overland, you get guided back by radar, etc. At sea, if you're a naval pilot, you go off into the big blue yonder, have a combat, you're not sure where your carrier is, and maybe a hundred miles away somewhere in the ocean. It can't tell you or help you to get back, otherwise it would reveal its position.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:10

Many never got back, never found the carrier. Many were lost like that.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:16

When you get back, that's only the beginning of your problems. You've got to land on a maybe a pitching ship.

Speaker 419:24

Man.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:24

And heavy seas?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:26

At one stage we had

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:29

One incident every nine landings.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:33

I call it a game of Russia.

Presenter19:34

In Roulette.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:35

Yeah.

Presenter19:36

You hold the world record for the most deck landings ever performed. I think it is to be absolutely precise. Two thousand four hundred and seven.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:44

The American Navy gave a chap I met him a dedicated job of beating my record.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)19:53

To his everlasting credit, he got up to sixteen hundred and then had a nervous breakdown.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)20:01

I can see his problem of giving being given a job to beat a record is very different from one just accruing as you go along. You're very gracious. Tell me about your fifth disc, then.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)20:16

Now my wife was a Northern Irish lady. She sang solos in cathedrals. The one that used to send a shiver down my spine was, of course, Avi Maria. I love it, and um it will remind me of my dear lady.

Speaker 420:52

Oh, see your clean.

Speaker 420:58

Oh be lost.

Presenter21:45

Curie de Canawa and Ave Maria. Now, Captain Eric Brown, it was uh june nineteen forty five, and you were a fluent German speaker, and you were given the job

Presenter21:54

of interrogating the commander of the Luftwaffe, and of course Hitler's right hand man, Hermann Goering. What what are your memories of that extraordinary encounter?

Presenter22:04

He was

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)22:05

He was quite charismatic in many ways. He had a presence, no doubt about that. And he was very straightforward. And any questions I asked him, he didn't dither around. I asked him, How did you see the outcome of the Battle of Britain? and he said a draw.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)22:25

And I said, How have you arrived at that conclusion?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)22:29

And he said, well, the casualty list changes from you being in your f favour to our favour. And he said, just as this change happened, I had to withdraw all our fighters because Hitler wanted called them back to train and get ready for the Operation Barbarossa, which was the invasion of Russia.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)22:54

Now all this

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)22:55

from what I've checked, seems perfectly true. It doesn't mean that there was a draw, but his argument at least he had a quite a valid

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:05

The reason for it.

Presenter23:07

When you went to Belsen to liberate the camp, oh w what are your

Presenter23:11

May I ask you what your memories are of that? What has predominantly stayed with you about that experience? I've never.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:19

Yeah.

Presenter23:19

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:19

Seen such

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:22

desecration of human beings. Um when we went in there were piles of bodies, I mean as high as the roof here. They were mostly female.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:33

Two thirds of the camp were female. They were bulldozed and with a bulldozer. Literally, they were all in grotesque positions.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:43

The barracks were originally built.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:46

To house sixty people, there's one loo at the end.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:51

When we were there there were two hundred and fifty people in each bag.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)23:55

They were three tiers of bunks, open slats.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:00

And the ones lying up at the top messed on the ones below, and they in turn messed on the ones below them. The stench was utterly, utterly appalling.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:12

That lives with me to this day. And uh they were all they were lost souls. They were dying and there there was no way back. They had gone too far. There were zombies walking outside. But even if I stopped,

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:29

and tried to help them, and say, Don't want any longer, you're free now.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:33

They didn't respond. Their minds had gone.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:38

Eric over the year

Presenter24:38

There's I wonder how um

Presenter24:42

How you've coped with those memories, how you've coped with seeing what human beings are capable of, the the treatment that they are capable of towards other human beings, it would you you you're such a sort of solid character. You you don't seem to be haunted by by those horrors.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:51

You are such a

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:55

I

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)24:57

I think I've seen so many dead bodies in in the war.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)25:04

And uh you have to live with it.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)25:06

You learn to try and deal with this terrible specter of death then.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)25:14

is the inevitability of war.

Presenter25:18

Let's take a break for some music. Tell me about we're going to listen to your sixth choice of the morning.

Presenter25:23

Yes, this is a nice happy tune. Tell me about this.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)25:25

I when I heard it, I thought to myself, Well, yes, I have my irresponsible sides too. Let me tell you one of the things I did which will demonstrate this. I was asked to do the first landing on a small carrier of a Spitfire or a C fire.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)25:48

Having done this, I was full of the joys of spring, and um on the way back from the event, uh more or less, I had to pass the fourth bridge, which has three lovely spans, as you know. So I did a loop round each span. You did not

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)26:07

And upset the inhabitants of Queensferry, who.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)26:12

reported it to the police. Fortunately didn't get the side number of the aircraft, and nobody, nobody thought the Navy had a Spitfire. So you were in the clear. It all fell on the RF and they were accused of it. I wasn't caught out there. If I had been I think I'd have been court martialled.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)26:32

They might still be after Urelik.

Speaker 426:34

Ha ha ha.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)26:35

Yeah.

Speaker 326:36

Call me irresponsible.

Speaker 326:43

Call me unreliable.

Speaker 326:49

Throw in

Speaker 326:51

Undependable two

Speaker 427:00

Uh

Speaker 427:02

I foolish aloof.

Speaker 427:07

Whoa.

Presenter27:11

Andy Williams, and call me irresponsible. I'm Captain Eric Winkle Brown, you're not a man to slow down. You told me just before we came into this studio this morning that you're recently back from Fort Worth in Texas. Tell me what you were doing there.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)27:24

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)27:25

I was invited by the makers of the new F5 fighter. To have a go in the go at the simulator. In the simulator. Yes. The pilot, I felt, is there in case something goes wrong with the computers and there's a human brain to take over and sort it all out.

Presenter27:45

And I wonder, as such a a well-decorated fighter pilot who on occasion in combat has almost actually looked into the eyes of the the pilot that you're up against in the skies, what do you make of modern combat, where we have, ostensibly, pilots sitting in bunkers thousands of miles away controlling drone strikes on targets that they will will never see and maybe don't have much of a notion of? What do you make of that type of combat?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)28:12

Well, I think I know how mother feels about that uh that she feels, God bless it, that my son won't be taken and killed. But, from my point of view,

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)28:25

The young men that play these war games and electronic devices today will be the pilots of the future. I think we have just got to accept.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)28:37

that this is the way things are going to go.

Presenter28:40

You last fly a plane. How old were you? Nineteen ninety four. So you would have been aged what then? Mid seventies. To not be able to fly any more. How did that feel, to give up something that you loved so much? To be frank with you.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)28:55

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)28:56

It was like drug withdrawal, as I would imagine it. I was very edgy.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)29:03

I've been so used to walking out and getting into an airplane to get up with a day ahead of you where you've nothing to do, more or less. I must have been very difficult to live with for about a year after I gave up flying.

Presenter29:19

Let's have some music, Captain Eric Brown. What are we going to hear now? It's your seventh disc of the morning. Tell me about this.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)29:25

The Americans sent for me during the Korean War to help them out with test flying.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)29:31

So we went out to the main Naval Air Test Center in Maryland.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)29:38

Or one day we were told that Glen Miller's revived band he had long gone of course was coming there, led by Tex Bennicky, who was the alto saxophonist in the band.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)29:54

To my utter surprise he knew about the incident when I had sung at last, and then he met my wife, and she was singing in the concert.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)30:07

And he said to her,

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)30:09

Would you like to try a swing song with us in the band?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)30:13

The song was serenading blue.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)30:17

And eventually she sang this on the night of the concert.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)30:21

And I thought did pretty well.

Speaker 430:24

When I hear that serenade in my

Speaker 430:31

I'm somewhere in another world alone with you.

Speaker 430:39

Sharing all the joys we used to know many more

Presenter30:53

Sung by Pat Friday. That was Serenade in Blue and the Glen Miller Orchestra accompanying there, of course. And Eric you say you chose that for memories of of your wife singing with the Glen Miller Orchestra. Your wife Lynn died in uh nineteen ninety eight. Together you you had a son, actually named Glenn.

Presenter31:09

Um ha you inherited your love of flying from your father. Did he inherit it from you? Does your son like to fly? Purely as a hobby. Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:17

He flies gliders.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:19

which of course in many ways is the purest form of flat.

Presenter31:22

You are 95. I I wonder if you're are you beginning to slow down? Is life getting a bit uh

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:28

Not that I've noticed.

Presenter31:29

Yeah.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:31

Jean, my partner at the moment, is ninety-two. She's um feels that I'm

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:38

Right.

Presenter31:38

I I like the way you say Jean, my partner, at the moment. I hope her coat's not on a shaky peg, as they say.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)31:45

Oh, no, not at all. No, no, we've been together for uh fourteen years now.

Presenter31:50

Now, Eric, you know that I've invited you here to day to be cast away to a desert island. You're going to be all on your own. No World War Two comrades. You're not going to have anybody with you to keep you company. You are a noted survivor. Are you good on your own?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)32:06

I am good on my own yes, I am. I would like a companion, but if if that wasn't possible, I think I'd live in my memories, Kirsty.

Presenter32:15

Let's hear your final piece of music for the morning then, Eric. What are we going to hear now?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)32:19

Lord Stewart, with his lovely husky voice, sang this in a documentary associated with aircraft carrier Rock Royal, and he sang it in such a way that I think the Royal Navy felt this will be our theme song for naval aviation.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)32:39

So we've t taken them to our heart in this suspect.

Speaker 432:43

I am safe.

Speaker 432:47

I am sailing.

Speaker 432:50

Oh my God.

Speaker 432:54

Across the sea.

Speaker 432:58

I am saving.

Speaker 433:01

Starmie Water.

Speaker 433:05

To be where are you?

Speaker 433:09

To it

Speaker 433:11

Uh

Presenter33:13

That was Rod Stewart and sailing. So it's time for me, Eric, to give you the books. I give every castaway a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take another book along. What's your book going to be?

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)33:25

I would like to take a book called The Moon Landings by Reggie Turnall, who was the BBC space correspondent, because in that book there are two people who had a great effect on my life, and I was very, very intrigued by them.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)33:45

One was Werner von Braun, a German scientist.

Presenter33:49

And I know that the other person involved in this book inevitably would be Neil.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)33:52

Together with Neil Armstrong, Neil and I met.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)33:56

just after he had been to the moon, and uh we were friends for thirty years.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)34:02

He was one of the finest human beings I've ever met.

Presenter34:07

Well, that can be your book, then, Eric. And uh you're allowed a luxury, too, to take to the island, to make life uh just a little bit more bearable. What will your luxury be?

Presenter34:15

Uh

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)34:15

My luxury would be to take my twelve flight log books.

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)34:20

I'd be on this little island of all by myself. I'd relive my life right through. And uh I think I'd enjoy every minute of it.

Presenter34:31

I will give you those. And if you had to save just one of these eight disks to day, which one would you save from the waves? I would take Artisor Stardust.

Presenter34:42

Uh

Captain Eric Brown (Winkle)34:42

Beautiful, beautiful playing.

Presenter34:44

Right, that's yours. Captain Eric Winklebrown, it's been a great pleasure. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Been a delight, Chrissy.

Presenter35:33

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter35:35

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4